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United States Government Security

White House Urged To Address Surge in Ransomware Attacks (bloomberg.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and governments urged the White House to root out safe havens for criminals engaging in ransomware and step up regulation of cryptocurrencies, the lifeblood of hackers, in the hopes of controlling a growing wave of attacks. From a report: These are two of 48 recommendations made by a task force in a report Thursday to the Biden administration aimed at fighting the continuing ransomware episodes that plague major corporations, local governments and health-care providers across the world. The task force, organized by the Institute for Security and Technology, said the cyber-attacks have become a $350 million criminal industry -- a four-fold increase from the previous year. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department created its own, independent ransomware task force, signaling growing awareness inside the U.S. government of the now decade-old threat. Ransomware is a type of malicious code that typically encrypts a victim's data or network of computers. The hackers then demand a ransom to decrypt the information. More recently, ransomware gangs have also stolen data and threatened to make it public unless the victim pays a fee.
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White House Urged To Address Surge in Ransomware Attacks More

White House Urged To Address Surge in Ransomware Attacks

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  • Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:11AM (#61327458)

    Make it illegal to pay the ransom. Watch how fast it stops. Even if the ransom is paid, there's zero guarantee that it won't get leaked anyways. Should have secured your data better.

    • I thought it was already illegal? But most of these ransomware gangs operate from Russia or other untouchable countries so how can you stop them?

      • Told you motherfuckers, https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com]

        • Strictly speaking it's not illegal, it really depends on who the money goes to. The act of paying the ransom is never illegal, rather it's the fact that you paid money to somebody who is on a government shitlist, no matter what the reason.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Not only is it not illegal, but for companies that get Insurance coverage to help pay costs to recover from cybersecurity incidents (The labor and materials to recover are expensive even if you have backups).. it seems the insurance companies will often set the reimbursement amount as the lesser of costs of the ransom and the estimated cost of rebuilding from backups.... In other words, if these businesses could recover their data by restoring from backups - It is possible that the insurance company w

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Its only illegal if you are sending money to a group there are sanctions against. I forget the exact law "aiding Americas enemies act" or something along those lines.

        Basically if the perps are not already on some state department naughty list you can pay - but there are also other rules now against the FBI helping facilitate payment. So if you decide to pay you are really on your own.

        Then there is the public perception of it all. So what a lot of companies do is hire these 'recovery firms' to get the datab

    • Re:Easy fix (Score:5, Funny)

      by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:48AM (#61327616) Journal
      Yup, it worked great with Tax evasion. We made it illegal. And boom, every one pays taxes without fail, there is absolutely no tax evasion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Your sig is referring to "Rajnikanth"? But I still don't get the output redirection?

        • If you replace Chuck Norris with Rajnikanth, in a Chuck Norris joke, it becomes a fact.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shanen ( 462549 )

            In that case, I suggest the sig could be clarified as:

            sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikanth/g' joke => fact

            But you must be a fan. I'd never heard of him before.

  • Force software companies to secure their software (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:14AM (#61327468)
    That means either forcing upgrades from Windows 7 and below to Windows 10 or make ESUs free. Plus Force Android phone developers to update their OS.

  • Sanction all financial services which deal with cryptocurrency world wide. The US can do it for Iran, they can do it for cryptocurrency exchanges.

    Problem solved.

    • cryptocurrency exchanges must hold funds like an bank and follow banking laws.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      as well as imposing taxation and trasaction fees. a ton of your cost of gasoline is a variety of taxes at every level of government. Or a better example, alcohol. At one time there was no sales tax on beer, spirits, and wine, because of the ridiculous amounts of tax already done before it hits the shelf. But then a bunch of non-drinking baptists started pissing and moaning thinking us sinners were not having to pay any tax on what clearly is a sin. So here is the breakdown for alcohol in my state:

      the st
  • You can try, but most in this care are or choose to be dumb.

  • You want govt to help? (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:27AM (#61327518) Journal
    All these years we decired government is the beast. "Starve The Beast! Starve The Beast!!" was the resounding cry. When asked would you take 1 $ increase in taxes for 10 $ cut in spending, we cried "No way! Cut it Cut it Cut it! To the bone!". Some us kept shouting, "If you shrink the government small enough to be drowned in a bath tub, some big corporation will actually drown it". We were shouted down.

    Now we got what we wanted. Government small enough to hide in a bathtub when the pandemic rages on. Government has to print trillions of dollars and give them to the very private companies that refused to pay their share of the taxes or shoulder their share of the burden of governing. We have no power to enforce even the basic laws. Even the minimal taxes are being evaded rampantly and flagrantly and government can't get even enforce that.

    Now you are urging the White House? Who are you people? Did you speak out when the government was being cut to the bone and beyond? Were silent then? Shut up now.

    If you were silent or agreed with The most dangerous words in USA are I am from the government and I am here to help you have no right to complain. You are the reason why Govt can't do anything.

    • When asked would you take 1 $ increase in taxes for 10 $ cut in spending, we cried "No way! Cut it Cut it Cut it! To the bone!".

      Well, if we could get a $10 cut in spending in exchange for a $1 increase in taxes, I think pretty much everyone would be in favour.

      Alas, what we usually get is a $1 increase in taxes, and a $10 increase in spending to make up for it....

      • It is perfectly ok for you to take that position. But you can't that stand and then demand Government do something about ransomware attacks or cyberthreats.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ebyrob ( 165903 )

          I could still demand they repeal bad laws like the DMCA that stifle research into cryptography. Oh Snap! Too much government money CAN do really bad things to the world!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      All these years we decired government is the beast. "Starve The Beast! Starve The Beast!!" was the resounding cry....

      Government is still the beast, BUT Enforcement of our Laws to protect the public safety and property owners against evil actors are literally the primary job of government that is supposed to take priority over everything else - If they are spending bucks on secondary things, they'd better be doing their primary job first -- the prominence and existence of ransomware gangs represents an utte

      • Government will protect the rights of property owners when majority of the people own property. Net worth of 50% of Americans is negative. They have no property worth protecting. Once you impoverish the population to that level there is no way you can have a Democracy that supports property rights. If people are not working it is because they are not getting paid enough. If you pay them enough they will work.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Dude your entire post has FUCK all to do with anything here. One of the few things the starve the beast crowd generally supports the government doing is law enforcement.

      Last I checked ransomware gangs are not 'big corporations' in sense you are ranting about.

      So here is a wild thought - rather than raise taxes lets divert some of the money we apparently have to pass out to people to not work due to covid and instead use it have the FBI/CIA/Armed Forces go crack skulls of the people running these ransomware a

      • The starve the beast people's idea of law enforcement is militarized police running an authoritarian regime over "them" to protect the property rights of "us". If "they" dont have anything worth protecting, they are not going to obey the law. It is far easier for them to provide food, shelter and a decent quality of life for FREE than to fund police that will enforce the law the way starve the beast people imagine the society should be run.

  • Computers are a passing fad (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:28AM (#61327524)
    They will go away in a few years.

  • LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:40AM (#61327574)

    As everyone knows, a proper backup systems will thwart a ransomware attack. What all these people are demanding is a justification for not having a proper backup system in place. Alternatively, they are demanding software be perfect while being unwilling to pay for or migrate to perfect software.

    Any way you slice it, they are all demanding they not be held accountable for their own negligent management.

    • Re:LOL! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @09:46AM (#61327604)
      Only if they do them right. Had a site's system go down, went to restore from backup. They had 6 months of backups, all done wrong. Never tested the restore procedure, so they never noticed. Had to wipe out the system and start over.
      • He did write proper. Proper does include testing.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        I have no sympathy for a business that loses data because they didn't have a proper backup system in place. Having a system in place, have it test, and having a working restore procedure is all apart of doing business today. Not having this is just sloppy and lazy.

        No sympathy

      • Re:LOL! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by UnixUnix ( 1149659 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @11:59AM (#61328110) Homepage
        Right. Indeed, sophisticated ransomware won't strike immediately upon penetrating a system; they linger, find out how backups are done and render them unusable. It takes alertness and planning to foil this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      As everyone knows, a proper backup systems will thwart a ransomware attack.

      Nope.. many of the gangs have upped the anti, just look at what is happening to the DC Police right not. Its no longer give us money and we might help you unlock your files - its not give us money or else we publish your files. Your backups won't help you there.

      You need strong egress and data leak protection controls, or keep the rasomware out in the first place with strong IPS controls, or to keep it from executing with strong host intrusion controls AND user training. Realistically you need to be all o

      • Simplest solution: If releasing the file will put someone's life at risk, don't have it on a system that can connect to the internet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          That might be reasonable.

          What about when
          a persons identity might be at risk
          a persons reputation might be at risk
          regulatory rules like HIPPA/FERPA might apply
          a trade secret might be at risk
          internal market analysis / forecasting data

          Where do you draws these lines for information air gaping?

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            I think they best solution is to just outlaw the internet. If you shut down the internet and you can't leak anything on the internet.
    • If ransomware does a full Emory [slashdot.org] on your deployment it's going to be very time consuming, and therefore very expensive, to clean up the mess regardless of your backup strategy.
    • Backups help with the encrypted data, sure, but backups don't do shit if your data has been stolen before being encrypted. They are diversifying more and more now beyond just encrypting. Recently the DC Police were hit and threats made to leak internal data including that on informants.

  • If a company (or Gov org) system is broken into, the Feds tax them 40% of total revenue (budget) for 2 years or until fixed, whichever is longer, no appeals. If your server is on the "Cloud", the Cloud Provider will also be taxed 15% of total revenue for 4 years.

    This tax will be put into a fund to protect people whose personal info was stolen. Similar to the "hazardous waste" fund is *suppose* to work, but make this new tax work.

    With this, you can be sure these companies will setup servers and desktops t

  • ...pay the ransom.

    Smart folks have the means in place to rollback changes to their infrastructure in just a few hours.

    Slightly less smart folks need days to restore from backup, but still have no reason to the ransom.

    IMO if you're stupid enough to not have good offsite backups, frequent snapshots, or a DR site with snapshots that you can quickly fail over to you should suffer the consequences.

  • Well the first to do is stop putting the Microsoft product on all your computers.

  • With all the money we're going to be saving* by pulling out of Afghanistan, that money could be used to set up super secret hunter killer teams. They would be tasked with hunting down and eliminating those who perpetrate ransomeware attacks.

    * By saving money I mean no longer propping up all those contract companies who live off the taxpayer dole such as the firm formerly known as Blackwater (now XE) or Halliburton or Raytheon.

  • Do government mandates even work? (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Thursday April 29, 2021 @12:53PM (#61328450)

    Before we implement more requirements, prove that NIST 800-171 works. Prove that DFARS requirements work. Prove that CMMC requirements work. The bar is already pretty tall to do business with the government. The costs for compliance are high. Its not clear that the processes actually work to prevent problems - I mean the SolarWinds hack bypassed most of those requirements. Let's make sure we are doing something effective and not just 'doing something'.

  • Step 1 -- Governments publish lists of seized wallets associated with crimes.

    Step 2 -- Recursively add contaminated wallets to lists of seized wallets

    Step 3 -- Seize wallets of contaminated major exchanges

    Exchanges that survive this process, if any, will start to be more careful about who they do business with. Monero, being much more difficult to trace contamination, will become exclusively used by criminals and will be radioactive because of its untraceability at legitimate exchanges.

    It is illeg

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